How do you do it?

07/06/2010

Yet again someone asked me ‘how do you do it?’ ‘ do you ever get to sleep?’. Of course I do sleep, but I understand the question. In church people ask ‘how do you do it?’ at work ( I am bi-vocational) people ask ‘how do you do it?’. The inference is that it is too much for one person. But in actual fact though it is a lot of work, it is not too much, it is only a matter of shifting mindsets and adjusting our assumptions of how our life should be and what we are supposed to do with our time.

Yet I recognize that in the eyes of many what has now become natural to me would seem like a big deal, it did once in mine. But I cannot and I think those who work with me (who are also bi-vocational) cannot take any credit for any of it. It is just something that happens in you when God brands you and works on you, when God touches you. I watch the people around me and see how they begin to change as God touches them.

And as I read Tommy Barnett’s book Multiplication this morning, I was gratified to see this sentence in it ‘No sacrifice is too great for men and women whose hearts God has touched’ and I found myself praying that God will send me men and women whose hearts He has touched and that He will touch the hearts of the ones who He has already sent. For if we truly care about the condition of men and women without God, we will have to do things that will make people say ‘how do you do it?’ and consider them normal.

Shalom!

PS – an article on the Mennonite church page includes among other qualities of a bi-vocational pastor